Hard Time

Our short sale application has been declined.  Apparently, we make too much money. This is really, really bad news.  Let me back up a little...

We bought our house in 2008 for X amount of dollars.  A year later, the market crashed.  And when I say crashed, I mean crashed and burned.  Our house is now worth Y dollars.  Y = X - $40,000.

Yup, we're $40,000 upside down in our house, for no reason other than bad timing.  We're sick of paying money into something that is so far upside down. If we're going to throw away money, why not throw it away in the form of rent at a lower price, in a better location, closer to Lance's work, with amenities such as a gym and a pool?

At first, we thought about renting out our house.  Several obstacles got in the way of that.  First, our loan type won't let us rent out our house, we have to be the primary occupants.  We kind of pushed that aside and figured they'd never find out.  But then there's that "first time home buyer's tax credit" that we applied for in 2009.  What a joke.  We had H&R Block do our taxes, and when the guy who was helping us asked us if we wanted to do it we said, "No. We don't want to do that because it has to be paid back."  He responded with, "You don't have to pay it back!  I would strongly recommend getting it, it's free money!"  He was very, very misinformed.  We do have to pay it back. Basically it's an extra $500 per year that we have to pay on our taxes.  Anyway, because of that "tax credit", we have to live in our home until it's paid back.  Lastly, our mortgage payment is so ridiculously high, no one would want to pay that in rent.  The town homes around here rent for about $900/month, and our payment is much, much higher than that.

Refinance?  Hah!  Everyone we called said they couldn't help us.


I've come to the conclusion that those of us who work extremely hard for our money, are good at saving money, are good at budgeting and live comfortable because of the above get screwed over while everyone else gets all the free handouts and help.

People who bought their homes after the market crashed?  Oh yeah, they don't have to pay back that tax credit. Only those of us who got screwed over by the crash have to pay it back.  How is that fair?

Part of me wants to abandon ship.  Let it foreclose.  Who cares anyway?  Foreclosure would give us bad credit for 7 years.  So, we'd have to rent for 7 years.  So what?  We'd have to live in this house for at least 10 or more years in order to BREAK EVEN on what we paid in the first place.  So, foreclosure is temping.  Very tempting.

Bottom line, yes we can afford our house.  But, what is the point?  It's too far from Lance's work, it's far from what little family I do have left in this state, and our house payment is too high for what we live in.